Page 187 of The Werewolf’s Wrong Mate

“Stay human,” she whispered.

I bent and pressed my mouth to her fingers. “I will.”

Outside the suite, the pack prepared for war. Inside it, Cassie fell asleep holding my hand.

Chapter 22:

A Cruel Kind of Truth

Ian

I didn’t sleep.

Cassie did, eventually, though sleep had taken her like a debt collected rather than a mercy given. Sava had brought a cup of bitter tea, stood over her with the expression of a woman who had dragged larger wolves back from death by sheer contempt, and told Cassie to drink.

Cassie had argued because she was Cassie. She made it through half a complaint about werewolf medicine tasting like old lawn clippings and regret before the pain took enough out of her that she stopped wasting strength. She drank. She glared. She muttered something about lodging a formal complaint with the supernatural hospitality board.

Then her eyes closed. That had been hours ago.

I sat beside her bed and listened to her breathe. The suite was too quiet around her. Too soft. Too clean. It smelled of linen, salve, old blood, and the bitter herbs Sava had rubbed into Cassie’s torn skin. A lamp burned low near the bed, throwing warm light across the bruises at her wrists, the sealed cut along her cheekbone, the bandage covering her hip. She had curled onto her good side with one hand tucked beneath her cheek and the other wrapped around two of my fingers.

Even asleep, she held on. Even asleep, she knew better than to trust this place without an anchor.

The thought sat inside my ribs like broken glass.

Outside the suite, the pack didn’t sleep either. Wolves moved through the hall in disciplined silence, which was almost worse than panic. Orders came in low bursts. Guards rotated at the door, then at the balcony, then through the service passage. Somewhere below us, council members argued inside thick old walls and thought stone made them private.

They were wrong. I heard enough.

“The full moon is tomorrow.”

“We cannot let it set.”

“The human has already compromised command.”

“If the mark becomes permanent, the enforcer belongs to a foreign hand.”

“Ronan must solve this before moonrise.”

Solve.

That was how cowards dressed murder when they wanted another man to carry the knife.

Cassie shifted in her sleep. I turned my hand under hers so her palm rested more easily against mine. The little crease between her brows softened.

I shut my eyes. For a moment, I felt her hand in my shirt in the hunt course. Her palm against my face. Her voice moving through blood and teeth and the thick red dark where Ronan’s command had gone silent.

I’m alive. You found me. Now come back.

I had. For her, I had, and the council had seen that. Ronan had seen it. Every wolf who had watched me ignore Alpha command and bend under Cassie’s shaking hand had seen the one thing more dangerous than my loss of control.

They had seen who held the chain.

A soft knock came at the outer door and my eyes opened.

Sava didn’t wait for permission. She eased inside with a medical bag in one hand and a knife she had not bothered to hide in the other. She checked Cassie before she looked at me. Cassie slept through Sava’s fingers at her wrist. She slept through the careful lift of the blanket, the inspection of the bandage, the hand Sava laid lightly over the bite mark.

Only when Sava touched the edge of Cassie’s jaw did Cassie murmur my name.